Making a Wargaming Terrain Mat / Base Cloth

By Steven Thomas on 29 Oct 2008 | Last Updated 12 Feb 2015

I’ve been using a plain green felt base cloth for my games since, well, forever. Originally it was a dark green pool table baize I got off Evan Allen. More recently I got a lighter green felt base cloth from S&A Scenics. But they are well, dull, so I’ve been toying with what I could replace them with.

Plain Green Felt Base Cloth

My current base cloth is from S&A Scenics. It is a much better colour than my original dark green pool table baize but is rather uninspiring.

Painted Felt Terrain Mat

I asked the Shako discussion forum how to improve the look of my Shako games. Tom Breza responded with instructions for how make a painted terrain mat to replace my plain green one. He also provided photos of an example made by his friend, also called Tom.

Painted Felt Terrain Mat

Materials

Felt

Paint

Paint roller

A nice sized area to lay the felt out to paint. A driveway works well but you may end up with some on it if you are not careful.

Felt

The main material is a large piece of beige felt

I checked with Tom about what he meant by “Beige”. He was aiming for light brown rather than the “natural wool”. I ended up using “Teddy” coloured felt from Craft Felts by John Paul Products . Sold my the metre. I got 3 m long x 1.5 wide.

I got some samples from Fred Aldous in the UK. He has rolls of felt which at 180 cm wide and sold by the metre. Because I was looking for “brown” rather than “natural wool” went for Tan (Golden Sand) rather than Beige (Mushroom). However when I got some Tan I found it a little too golden.

Paint

Flat interior house paint in various colours

Beige (for the base colour)

Browns (for dirt)

Greens (for fields)

Method

Lay out the felt flat.

Roll on various shades of green and brown to come up with a patchwork of rural fields. For the best results you use a shade of paint as a base and add greens and browns to the base for the different colours. Start with a beige paint as the base and add browns to make the dirt areas. Add green for the growing crop areas. This way they tie in with one another and are effectively variations of the base paint colour.

You can be sloppy with it. The paint in an area does not need to completely cover the felt. Letting some of the beige felt show through in small amounts is OK and actually adds to the effect. This includes spots of the beige cloth showing through inside a painted area but also strips of beige cloth between painted areas. So sloppy is OK.

Teddy Bear Fur Terrain Mat

A couple of years ago Evan Allen put me on to Teddy Bear Fur as the basis for a terrain mat. Seems quite popular at the moment.

Materials

Teddy Bear Fur. 1.5 m wide. Use light coloured fur as similar to ripe wheat and easy to spray other colours on.

Spray paint. DIY emulsion or Auto Spray; both cheaper than modelling sprays. Get light to mid green and a sand colour.

Two sided Painted Hardboard

I wanted an easy urban table, so Nikolas Lloyd suggested I paint the rough back side of some hard board black then dry brush to get a cobblestone effect. The photo is from a game before I did dry brushed the cobblestones but you get the idea. The board is 3 feet by 2 feet.

3′ x 2′ urban table

I also painted the flat side of the hardboard in Flat Earth (as per my flocking style). I used very dilute paint so it gave a kind of washy / tie-dyed effect.